Tag: featured

The Kingdom Rosary

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I know I said I wasn’t going to blog any more this month, but I found some time this lunchtime to write down a few thoughts…

Last week at “Theology On Tap” Bernadine Carr gave a talk on the subject of The Beatitudes (“Blessed are the poor in spirit…”). In the run-up to her talk I was reminded of a devotional practice I followed years ago when I was living in Cheltenham…

I found myself drawn to praying with rosary beads, but at that time I didn’t feel comfortable with praying the Marian prayers of the rosary. So what I did was to replace the “Hail Mary”s and “Hail Holy Queen”s with short passages of Scripture and pray with those instead.

An example of this is found below. It is a guide to what could be dubbed the “Kingdom Rosary” or “The Rosary of St. Matthew”.

The Kingdom Rosary (MS Word) | The Kingdom Rosary (PDF)

At the beginning of this month, in preparation for Bernadine’s talk, I began this “Kingdom Rosary” and quickly fell in love with it all over again. It’s really helpful for memorizing Scripture and it’s also much shorter than a traditional Rosary, which is ideal if I’m walking just a couple of blocks to pick up a sandwich for lunch.

If any of you end up doing one of these or have any suggested alterations, please leave a comment below 🙂

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Hippolytus Of Rome…Saint and Anti-Pope

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Hippolytus was an Early Church Father who lived in 3rd Century Rome and the story of his life is a particularly colourful one. He was the first Anti-Pope of the Catholic Church, setting himself up as Bishop of Rome in competition with with Pope Callixtus, and later with his successors Urban and Pontianus.

Yet, despite all this, we also call him Saint Hippolytus. How did the first Anti-Pope also manage to be declared a Saint of the Catholic Church? Good Question! Jimmy Akin has the Catholic answer…

Quite some time ago in the JP2 Group we read through Apostolic Tradition, a work attributed to St. Hippolytus. I have just finished recording the text onto MP3:


Apostolic Tradition – St. Hippolytus of Rome

Many thanks to the members of the JP2 Group for being my congregation! 😉

“This requires ceremony…”

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The other night I went to see the movie Courageous with a bunch of other guys on a “man trip” ;-). I’ve written about this movie before, but over the next few weeks I’d like to mention a few other thoughts which came to mind while watching the film…

The Resolution

In the story, a group of four men decide to sign a Resolution, a statement of conduct (derived from Scripture) which they promise to follow as both men and as fathers.

In a certain scene, one of the men shows a copy of the Resolution to his wife. She gets really excited and then starts asking him lots of questions. What will the final Resolution look like? What is he going to wear when he signs it? etc. The man gives his wife a look of complete incomprehension and confusion. It’s clear that he hadn’t even considered these things. To this she responds:

“If you’re gonna do this, then do it right. Something like this requires…ceremony!” 

I had to smile at this, since, to my Catholic ears, I heard:

“If you’re gonna do this, then do it right. Something like this requires…liturgy“ 🙂

 

The Liturgy Ceremony

Later in the film we see what this ceremony looks like…

All the men are wearing suits and their family members are present, also in formal attire. They meet in a beautiful park underneath some trees. A long-time friend and minister to one of the men officiates, calling each of the men forward one-by-one.  Each man then repeats the Resolution out loud in the presence of his family and pastor, after which he signs a framed copy of the Resolution written in beautiful calligraphy, which he later hangs in a prominent place in his home.

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Bigger than Bob

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I recently started to take a little bit more interest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This concerns itself with ensuring that when someone uses a search engine to look for something, if your site is at all relevant to the search, it will appear as close to the top of the search results as possible.

It was only after I decided to call my blog “Restless Pilgrim” that I found out that it’s also the name of a Bob Dylan biography. Well, today I’m pleased to announce that I’m bigger than Bob Dylan!

Okay, now to get that #1 spot…

New Testament Warm-ups

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Bible Question Mark

I am part of a Bible Study currently working through the Gospel of Matthew. The group has been meeting for over a year now and we’ve worked our way through several books of the New Testament.

When we come together, before we begin looking at the book in question, we have a bit of a question-and-answer session. The goal of these questions is to have a clear understanding as to the structure of the New Testament.

Over the months that we’ve been meeting, the number of  questions have increased. I thought it would be encouraging for everyone to see how many questions concerning the New Testament they can now answer. It turns out that, not only can they recite the books of the New Testament in order, but that they can answer over fifty questions about it:

1. In what language was the New Testament written?
2. What is the likely exception to this?
3. Which books appear first in the New Testament?
4. Why are these books placed first in the canon?
5. Why do they appear in this order?
6. Which Gospels are attributed to Apostles?
7. With whom is Mark associated?
8. What is Mark’s other name?
9. With whom is Luke associated?
10. What is Luke’s profession?
11. What comes after the Gospels?
12. By whom is it written?
13. To what genre does it belong?
14. What is the first main message of the Acts of the Apostles?
15. What is the second main point of the Acts of the Apostles?
16. Between what years do the events described in Acts of the Apostles take place?
17. What appears after Acts?
18. Why are these epistles placed in this order?
19. What are the names of the cities/communities?
20. From where did Paul write the epistle to the Philippians?
21. What city was he probably in at the time?
22. Why did Paul write that letter?
23. Who probably delivered this letter for Paul?
24. What are the main themes of that letter?
25. What Christian hymn does Paul quote in the letter in Chapter 2?
26. What is the main theme behind the letters to the Thessalonians?
27. What claim-to-fame do the Thessalonian letter have?
28. What appears after Thessalonians?
29. Who was Timothy?
30. What background information do you know about Timothy?
31. Who was Titus?
32. Who was Philemon?
33. Where did Philemon most likely live?
34. What is the context of the letter?
35. What was the name of Philemon’s slave?
36. What is the meaning of the slave’s name?
37. What does Paul ask of Philemon?
38. What appears after Philemon?
39. Why does Hebrews appear here?
40. What literary genre is Hebrews?
41. What is the main theme of the book?
42. What did St. Thomas Aquinas think about the authorship of this epistle?
43. What appears after Hebrews? What category of books do we call these?
44. Who most likely wrote James’ epistle?
45. How would you summarize James’ epistle?
46. What documents appear next?
47. What documents appear after that?
48. After that?
49. What is the final book of the Bible?
50. What is its literary genre?
51. What are the two main senses of Scripture according to the Catechism?
52. What are the three types of spiritual senses?

I wasn’t taught this stuff in school. In fact, I remember that when I was teaching Confirmation it came as a surprise to many of the students that there was an Old Testament and a New Testament. Why isn’t this stuff taught in Catholic schools?!

UPDATE: The answers have now been posted:

Answers 1-16 | Answers 17-27 | Answers 27-42 | Answers 43-52

The article New Testament Warm-Ups first appeared on RestlessPilgrim.net

Catholic Church: Established AD 33 or AD 300? (5)

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At the moment on this blog, I am responding to a reader who commented on a post I wrote about Mary, Ark of the New Covenant. In my earlier posts, I dealt with her comments concerning Our Lady, but in her closing paragraph she made a number of assertions concerning the origins of the Catholic Church. In these last two posts I would like to respond to these final assertions:

I would suggest you do… more research about the origins of the roman catholic church which comes from pagan origins when it was founded in Rome by Constantine about 300AD. This is well known in history. Constantine was the first pope, and he mixed paganism with Christianity and that is how the Roman catholic church was born. You will find many parallels between the Roman catholic church and paganism.

In this particular post I think I’d like to spice things up with a little help from Barney Stinson. Since Monica has challenged me to investigate history…

Challenge

Let’s take a look at each of the assertions in turn…

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The Tantrum Song

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I’ve just got back home from my Holy Hour. Despite being brought up a practising Catholic and being in Catholic education for the majority of my schooling, I somehow missed out on many quintessentially Catholic experiences, two of which are Adoration and Benediction.

I remember an incident a few years ago when my girlfriend and I were asked to do the music at a healing Mass. We presented our song suggestions to the planning team and they were well received, but it was also requested that, at Benediction after Mass, we play “Tantum Ergo”.

At this point in my journey I was vaguely aware of what Benediction was, but neither of us were familiar with the hymn “Tantum Ergo”. We tried to “push back” on this suggestion and recommended other songs instead, ones with which we were more familiar. However, the planning team was adamant, we had to do “Tantum Ergo”…

After spending some time looking at the music we eventually concluded that it was “actually not too bad”. However, because of the unusually strong reaction to our suggestion to play something else, that hymn was forever dubbed in our minds as “The Tantrum Song”!

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